ADVANCED INTERACTION RESIDENCY: AIR

A view of the CIID Campus in Bergamo, Italy.

CIID in Bergamo, Italy

Our Advanced Interaction Residency (AIR) hosts seasoned industry leaders at our beautiful new location in Bergamo.
‍
The residency focuses on forward-thinking questions in human-computer interaction, with a special emphasis on AI and physical computing. Residents engage in collaborative, interdisciplinary applied research and design, working closely with CIID students and faculty to create innovative solutions and advancements in how people interact with technology.
‍

CURRENT AIR RESIDENT

2025/26: JOSHUA WALTON

Our newest Advanced Interaction Resident is Joshua Walton. Joshua is a leading innovator in the fields of Augmented and Mixed Reality, and has been blurring the lines between physical and digital experience for his entire career.

JOSHUA WALTON

Prior to his roles building the Design team for Meta Reality Labs Research and as Design Architect for Microsoft HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality, Joshua co-founded the LAB at the Rockwell Group in 2008, an interactive architecture group. Combining digital design, computation, and environment design, he has created a wide range of groundbreaking, often award-winning interactive spaces. Projects and clients include the Venice Biennale, the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, JetBlue JFK T5 Terminal, Google, Starwood Hotels, the Imagination Playground, and Intel at Maker Faire.
‍
In addition to research and prototyping, Josh will be teaching the Immersive Experiences class to the upcoming IDP cohort, alongside his longtime collaborator James Tichenor.
‍

PAST RESIDENTS

2025: NINA MATURU

Our 2025 Advanced Interaction Resident, Nina Maturu, is a strategist, futurist, and innovation executive. She’s spent two decades leading organizations through complex futures, working with government agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and remote communities across four continents.
‍

NINA MATURU
‍

Nina most recently served as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, where she expanded NASA's design futures capability and architected innovation frameworks for the Advanced Research Projects for Health (DARPA for health) during its founding year.

In the private sector, she’s led innovation strategy for companies including American Express, 3M, Amazon, JetBlue, and Bayer, to tackle real-world challenges spanning climate change to digital transformation.

During her residency at CIID, Nina explored what it means to be human in an age of technological transformation, with an emphasis on the future of smell, our most primitive sense.

A committed educator and mentor, Nina shapes the next generation of innovators through adjunct faculty positions at Parsons School of Design, New York University (NYU), and CIID.
‍

2024: HECTOR OUILHET

Hector Ouilhet was our first Advanced Interaction Resident at the CIID campus in Bergamo. Known to be a trailblazer, in his time at CIID Hector focused on The Future of Design in the Era of AI.

HECTOR OUILHET
‍

With 20+ years of experience, Hector has previously worked at HP, MIT, Google and Dropbox. He graduated from Interaction Design Institute Ivrea which is where he and the Founders of CIID first became entangled.In his career, he has transformed how billions of people communicate via technology.
‍

ARE YOU CIID’S NEXT ADVANCED INTERACTION RESIDENT?

The Advanced Interaction Residency is for those who want to take an active pause in their career to explore something they believe is both interesting and important. The CIID studio is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and hosts a constant flow of creative people from all over the world, enabling in-depth conversations and the development of ideas.

Our intention is for the format of this residency to evolve along with those who contribute, participate and inspire new thinking.

We’ll announce a call for Advanced Interaction Residents in the not too distant future. If you feel this would be an interesting opportunity, please let us know!